Current location in this text. Enter a Perseus citation to go to another section or work. Full search
options are on the right side and top of the page.

[1264a]
[1]
And this very point also must
not be ignored, that attention must be paid to length of time and to the long
period of years, in which it would not have escaped notice if these measures
were good ones; for nearly all of them have been discovered already, although
some of them have not been collected together and others though brought to
knowledge are not put into practice. And their value would become most manifest if one could see such a
constitution in actual process of formation; for one will only be able to
construct Plato's state by introducing its partitions and dividing up the
community into common messes and also into brotherhoods and tribes. So that in
the upshot no other regulation will have been enacted except the exemption of
the Guardians from the work of agriculture, which is a measure that even now the
Spartans attempt to introduce.

Moreover, the
working of the constitution as a whole in regard to the members of the state has
also not been described by Socrates,
nor is it easy to say what it will be. Yet the general mass of the citizens of
the other classes make almost the bulk of the state, and about these no definite
regulations are laid down, as to whether the Farmers also are to have their
property in common or to hold it in private ownership, and also whether
community of wives and children is to apply to them or not. For if the Farmers are to have the same complete
communism, what will be the difference between them and the Guardian class? or
what advantage will they gain by submitting to their government? or what
consideration will induce them to submit to
[20]
the government, unless the Guardians adopt some clever device
like that of the Cretans? These have conceded to their slaves all the same
rights as they have themselves except that they are forbidden gymnastic
exercises and the possession of arms. But if the family life and property of the
Farmers are to be such as they are in other states, what sort of communism will
there be? For there will inevitably be two states in one, and these antagonistic
to one another. For Socrates makes the
Guardians a sort of garrison, while the Farmers, Artisans and other classes are
the citizens.1
But quarrels and lawsuits and all
the other evils which according to
Socrates exist in actual states will all be found among his
citizens too. Yet he says that owing to their education they will not need many
regulations such as city and market by-laws and the other regulations of that
sort, although he assigns his education only to the Guardians. Again, he makes
the Farmers the masters of the estates, for which they pay rent; but they are
likely to be far more unmanageable and rebellious than the classes of helots,
serfs and slaves in certain states today. However, whether this communism is to be compulsory for
the Farmers in the same way as for the Guardians or whether it is not, has as a
matter of fact not been definitely stated anywhere, nor is there any information
about the connected questions, what are to be the political functions and the
education of the lower classes, and the laws affecting them. But it is not easy
to discover the answers to these questions, yet the character of the lower
classes is of no small importance for the preservation of the community of the
Guardians.

1 Or （omitting τοὺς before τεχνίτας） ‘For
Socrates makes one set of men guardians, a
sort of garrison, and another set farmers and artisans and citizens of the
other sorts.’

An XML version of this text is available for download,
with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted
changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.